With New Presidential Administration, What's the Fate of the NCUA?

Carrie Hunt

by Lisa Freeman
CUbroadcast Contributing Editor

Amidst President-Elect Donald Trump’s penchant for shaking things up, there have been a flurry of questions and speculation about the fate of NCUA, both in terms of who will be chairman -- or if instead it will be merged with the FDIC to create a consolidated financial regulator.

“There have been many questions about  the possibility of merging NCUA into the the FDIC,” said Carrie Hunt, Chief Advocacy Officer at America’s Credit Unions, noting that ACU, of course, supports maintaining an independent regulator for credit unions. She added that she believes bankers will largely agree.

“Having a consolidated financial regulator has worked in Europe and elsewhere,” Hunt said. “But for us, it’s not just about the regulator, it’s also about the insurance fund.”

Credit unions having an insurance fund separate from that of FDIC helped prevent the need for a government bailout for credit unions, she said. It’s one powerful reason ACU doesn’t expect Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to prioritize the creation of a consolidated financial regulator.

“I think this is pretty far down on the list,” she said. “It would be too disruptive to the financial markets to try to combine those insurance funds.”

As to the makeup of the existing board and who will be chair,  conventional wisdom would suggest that current Vice Chair Kyle Hauptman, as the sole Republican on the board, will be tapped to ascend to the chairmanship, but Hunt said with so many different moving parts, it’s difficult to predict what Trump will do.
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Among those moving parts: other federal financial regulators currently headed up by Democrats, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has also been mentioned as potentially being on the DOGE’s chopping block.

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